By: Gideon Sihombing *
Two days after the May 22 riots in Central Jakarta, Prabowo’s Legal Team officially submitted an election fraud suit to the Constitutional Court (MK). It aims to oppose the results of the 2019 presidential election announced by the KPU some time ago. In the official announcement revealed by the Chair of the KPU Arief Budiman, Paslon Jokowi – Ma’ruf Amin, succeeded in winning 55.5 percent of the vote, defeating the Prabowo – Sandiaga candidate who won 45.5 percent of the vote. Even though the Election Supervisory Agency (Bawaslu) once said that there had been no evidence of systematic fraud, and independent observers said that the election was free and fair.
The filing of the lawsuit would certainly raise a question mark, whether the effort would succeed in overthrowing Jokowi – Ma’ruf Amin, while the Court had received a similar lawsuit, but the lawsuit was rejected because Prabowo – Sandiaga BPN only attached a copy of 72 news from online media. The plan, the Court will hold the first hearing for the case on June 14, and give a verdict on June 28, 2019, said Fajar Laksono as the Court Spokesperson.
Paslon Prabowo – Sandiaga said, that the process of filing a lawsuit and legal effort are steps to ensure that we get free and fair election results. It also said, “people have watched with their own eyes, that the 2019 election is unfair”. However, this assumption was brushed aside by an exit poll conducted by the Indonesian Political Indicator survey organization on election day, the survey showed that 94 percent of voters believed that the election had taken place freely and fairly.
If we go back to digging the 2014 news ago, Prabowo, who was paired with Hatta Rajasa, also lost to Jokowi with a thinner difference and objected to the results, he also filed a complaint with the Constitutional Court but was refused. Even the call for people power that had been echoed in the last weeks of the campaign, seemed unable to change the vote that had been determined by the KPU RI, where consistently Prabowo still could not serve as President in 2019.
The Prabowo – Sandi faction’s suit also seems to be increasingly difficult, it refers to the declaration of victory made by Prabowo almost every day, the declaration of victory and even the claim of victory numbers also keeps changing. On the eve of the election, Prabowo claimed to have received 55.4 percent of the vote based on exit polls and 52.2 percent based on quick counts. The following day, this claim became 62 percent based on what was called the real count. In May, the claim changed again to 54.24 percent.
In contrast, the quick count results from various reputable survey institutions provide consistent results about the election results within a few hours after the close of the vote, which are then constantly displayed on television screens and news websites. The calculation proved to be consistent and not much different from the KPU manual calculation results.
Indonesia certainly is lucky to have a series of survey institutions with integrity, with a track record of being able to provide accurate quick counts for various elections. Even when someone accused the survey institute of falsifying data, they nimbly presented their data and methodology openly and challenged camp 02 to do the same.
In addition, the Prabowo camp also alleged that the KPU was manipulating the results of the vote, but the accusation did not seem to apply to most Indonesians. Because most Indonesians still believe that the KPU is an independent, credible and honest election organization.
Prabowo’s lawsuit also seems to be a mere formality, if we refer to the size of the margin of 17 million votes, or around 11 percent which actually doubled the margin of the 2014 presidential election by 8.4 million votes, that means large-scale fraud would be needed to obtain results such as that, if Prabowo really won the 2019 Presidential Election.
Surely the Prabowo-Sandiaga camp has a difficult challenge so that the lawsuit can be accepted by the Bawaslu and the MK. Moreover, a number of prominent party leaders from Paslon 02 have recognized the victory of Jokowi – Ma’ruf Amin, until the news circulated that PAN and the Democrat Party would dock to form a coalition with the Jokowi – Ma’ruf Amin government.
* The author is a Social Media Activist